THE CRANIOLOGY OF THE PEOPLE OF SCOTLAND. 221 



recorded. Anderson himself described in 1907 objects found in a low mound near 

 the beach on the east of the island of Oronsay : * brooches of bronze with iron pins, 

 beads of amber and serpentine, an iron knife and two human skeletons at full length 

 directed with the feet to the S.S.E. ; also iron rivets, as if the burial had been in 

 a ship. His description included an account of a Viking grave at Kiloran Bay, 

 Colonsay, from notes made by the late Mr Wm. Galloway. A mound 15 feet by 

 10 feet, with rough schist slabs, contained an iron sword, spear, axehead, umbo of a 

 shield, with some bronze articles, Anglo-Saxon coins of the ninth century, also a 

 human skeleton in a crouched position, that of a horse, and numerous iron rivets, 

 as if this also had been a ship burial. 



In 1896, within a gravel mound at Lamlash, Arran, about 170 feet above high- 

 water mark, a Viking burial was exposed, and was subsequently described by Mr J. A. 

 Balfour, f It contained a single-edged iron sword and the iron umbo of a shield of 

 the type of the eighth or ninth century. More recently, in 1909, a cairn at King's 

 Cross Point, Lamlash, was found to contain a heap of calcined human bones, with 

 charcoal, iron and bronze objects, a bronze coin of the ninth century, also iron 

 rivets, as if the body had been cremated in a boat. 



The skeleton from Kiloran Bay was said to be that of a powerful man, not of great 

 stature, with a long narrow dolichocephalic skull ; those from Oronsay were from a 

 large man and a woman, both advancing in age. Anderson described in his Rhind 

 Lectures on the Vikings, graves and mounds at Westray and at Pierowall in Orkney 

 in which iron implements and weapons, human bones and those of the horse and dog 

 were found. Those from Pierowall were associated with wooden planks and iron 

 rivets, which suggested an interment along with the ship. In the National Museum of 

 Antiquities is a male skull (E.T. 63) from Pierowall (Table VII), the vertex of which 

 was flattened ; the parieto-occipital slope was relatively steep. The basi-occipital 

 had been fractured transversely, and subsequently united obliquely, which might 

 have affected the measurements in length and height of the cranium and conse- 

 quently the cephalic and vertical indices, which were 817 and 60 respectively. 

 Another male skull (E.T. 62), stained brown from peat like E.T. 63, and possibly 

 from the same place, was neither flattened nor keeled on the vertex, and the parieto- 

 occipital slope was not so steep. It was longer than but not so broad as in 63, and 

 the cephalic and vertical indices were 75 "1 and 64 "9 respectively. It is possible that 

 one of these skulls may have been that referred to by Mr Wm. Rendall J as from 

 the Norse cemetery at Pierowall, Westray, and the other from the group of grave 

 mounds at Pierowall examined by Messrs Farrer and Gr. Petrie in 1841 and 1855. 

 Opportunities of measuring the skulls of the Norse Vikings have been scanty. 



* Proe. Soc. Antiq. Scot., vol. xxv, p. 432, 1891, and vol. xli, p. 437, 1907. 

 t Idem, vol. xliv, p. 221, 1910 ; The Book of Arran. 



% Anderson, Tlie Iron Age in Scotland in Pagan Times ; also Rendall in Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scot., vol. xiv, 

 p. 85, 1880. 



